January 2, 2025: "Photograph of the Girl," Good Friend's Brother, "Blue Ball"

I spent some time this morning scrolling through the pictures in my phone.  (Confession:  I'm terrible at organizing my photos.  It's just one big string of images in chronological order--no neatly-labeled folders for me.)  Of course, with each snapshot comes a flood of memories--smells, tastes, sounds.  Old friends.  New friends  Christmases past and present.  Loved ones here.  Loved ones gone. 

Sharon Olds studies a picture . . .

Photograph of the Girl

by: Sharon Olds

The girl sits on the hard ground,
the dry pan of Russia, in the drought
of 1921, stunned,
eyes closed, mouth open,
raw hot wind blowing
sand in her face. Hunger and puberty are
taking her together. She leans on a sack,
layers of clothes fluttering in the heat,
the new radius of her arm curved.
She cannot be not beautiful, but she is
starving. Each day she grows thinner, and her bones
grow longer, porous. The caption says
she is going to starve to death that winter
with millions of others. Deep in her body
the ovaries let out her first eggs,
golden as drops of grain.

As Olds' poem demonstrates, a photo can tell a story.  A young Russian girl during a famine, her body full of the promise of womanhood.  Of course, that promise remains unfulfilled.  Instead, she disappears with millions of others during a winter of hunger and starvation.  

Tonight, a good friend reached out to me with the news that her younger brother passed today.  Of course, she's lost, wandering around her apartment, not really sure what to do with herself.  I've been in the same situation a few times, and it takes a while to feel normal again.  Because you have to redefine what "normal" is.  

My friend lives quite a distance away, so I have no way to physically comfort her.  All I can offer are empty words (because all words are empty in the face of such loss) and a conversation about Woody Woodpecker and Marvin the Martian.  Nothing is going to replace her longing to hear her brother's voice right now.  

Tonight or tomorrow, my friend will probably start scrolling through pictures on her phone or in family albums.  It's natural--a way to resurrect someone you've lost.  Like the Russian girl Olds raises from the dead after 102 years.  

My friend will experience these small Lazarus moments a lot over the next few days/weeks/months.  Even years.  I still see my dad walking into church on Saturday evenings even though he's been gone since 2018.  My sister, Sally, is a constant presence in my life.

Please keep Saint Marty's friend in your thoughts in the coming days.  The dead stick with the living for quite a long time.

Today, in The Daily Poet, the prompt was this:  On this date in 1929, a document was signed between the U.S. ad Canada, protecting Niagara Falls from construction.  Write a poem about something you want to protect.  It can be a relationship, a memory, something in nature, or something in or about yourself.  If this is a first person poem, allow the speaker to be vulnerable.

Blue Ball

by: Martin Achatz

In the picture, you hold a blue ball

in your jaws, your spaniel ears

golden and long, eyes bright,

expectant, as if you want me

to reach through 20 years, snatch

the ball away, send it bouncing

across the living room floor, 

the bell inside its rubber shell

jingling like a harness bell

on a horse at full gallop through

a snowy, Robert Frost woods.

I hold the photo, pinched between

pointer and thumb, as if it's made

of crystal so thin a breath would

shatter it.  I can still hear the low

rumble in your chest, feel the steam

of your lungs on my palm.  Oh,

old friend, gone these many years,

I wonder if, in your last days,

a squirrel memory of me darted

through the pine trees of your mind,

you wanting to chase it with fury,

the coiled spring of your body

so tight your paws don't even touch

the earth as you run.  I hold onto

this hope, this precious blue thing--

somewhere, somehow you're still

running, my voice in your ears, calling

Fetch, boy, fetch!

May 7: Bugs Bunny, Nick Flynn, "Cartoon Physics, part 1"

Every Saturday morning when I was a kid, I would watch Bugs Bunny cartoons.  Two hours and a bowl of Lucky Charms.  That was my ritual.  I had every single Looney Tunes cartoon memorized, from Elmer Fudd singing The Barber of Seville to Marvin the Martian talking about his Q-36 Space Modulator.  And of course, there was Wile E. Coyote in his eternal pursuit of the Road Runner.

I don't know if I was a weird child, but I always wanted the Coyote to catch the Road Runner.  At least one time.  I felt bad for Wile E. every time he fell into a canyon or got blown up or run over by a truck.  I think, in some way, I connected with his obsession.  I understood wanting unattainable things.  I wanted to travel to Skull Island and see King Kong.  Climb aboard the Millenium Falcon and jump to hyperspace.  Spend some time in school detention with Molly Ringwald.

Yes, all good fantasies.  Yet, there was always that Wile E. Coyote moment:  running off the cliff, pumping legs, freezing in mid-air, looking down, and understanding the physics of disappointment.  That's a lesson I learned from watching Loony Tunes.

And that's what Nick Flynn is writing about in today's poem.

Now, if you'll excuse Saint Marty.  He has some cliffs to run off today.

Cartoon Physics, part 1

by:  Nick Flynn

Children under, say, ten, shouldn't know

that the universe is ever-expanding,   

inexorably pushing into the vacuum, galaxies

swallowed by galaxies, whole

solar systems collapsing, all of it

acted out in silence. At ten we are still learning

the rules of cartoon animation,

that if a man draws a door on a rock

only he can pass through it.   

Anyone else who tries

will crash into the rock. Ten-year-olds

should stick with burning houses, car wrecks,   

ships going down—earthbound, tangible

disasters, arenas

where they can be heroes. You can run

back into a burning house, sinking ships

have lifeboats, the trucks will come

with their ladders, if you jump

you will be saved. A child

places her hand on the roof of a schoolbus,   

& drives across a city of sand. She knows

the exact spot it will skid, at which point

the bridge will give, who will swim to safety

& who will be pulled under by sharks. She will learn

that if a man runs off the edge of a cliff

he will not fall

until he notices his mistake.

Who says cartoons aren't educational?